Nostalgia Critic
“Hellooo, I'm the Nostalgia Critic. I remember it so you don't have to!”
Douglas Darien "Doug" Walker (born November 17, 1981), also known as the Nostalgia Critic or That Guy with the Glasses, is an American YouTube personality, writer, comedian, entertainer, political commentator, and atheist who has been named the looniest, zany-to-the-max live-action-maniac on the Internet (by far). He became famous for his relentless criticism of Nostalgia, a religious belief formed by the '80s and '90s waves of children. This sparked the moral outrage from fundamentalist Christians and butthurt cartoon fanboys and that earned him subscribers. He used this popularity to start a nerdy news outlet known as "That Guy with the Glasses", which was renamed to "Channel Awesome" when he lost a war to control the site. He wears glasses which magnify his extremely poor vision x5,000,000,000, which makes his glasses 50 yards thick.
Critic is primarily a reviewer of retro movies and TV shows from the '80s and '90s. Doug has uploaded more than a dozen thousand viral videos from when he started using YouTube in 2007. He stopped uploading the unfunny viral videos as he went through too many hate comments. All you heard in his videos were "Why the fuck does Bugs Bunny know what a joint is?", or "What the fuck, Simon from Alvin and the Chipmonkees just said marijuana!". He also does top 11 lists such as "Top 11 Drug PSA's", "Top 11 Saddest Nostalgic Moments", and "Top 11 Scariest Nostalgic Moments". He decided to do Top 11 lists because he was on drugs and, in his words, Rick James was the coolest thing since awesomeness. While Walker is a staunch antitheistic atheist (as Doug himself would say to that, "Redundant much redundant?"), he has rarely ever touched upon Christianity or Islam, instead focusing exclusively on Nostalgia and Cyantists.
Early life[edit]
The Critic was born in Naples, Italy, due to his parents visiting there. He later moved to Chicago, Illinois, United States, where he became a kickass suburban knight. In 6th grade Doug would be mistakenly identified by other children as the Nickelodeon cartoon character Doug, and would be made fun of for his supposed last name being "Funnie" (however, unlike the characters on Doug, Walker's classmates did not have abnormal skin diseases). Ironically, Doug would later become funny enough with his attacks against religion.
Career[edit]
Science career[edit]
After graduating college, Walker became a GENIUS! young scientist attempting to clone a human being. His best friend James Rolfe allowed Doug to test the device on him, but it backfired when Doug was distracted by a bird. The device turned Rolfe into an evil monster who kills innocent video games — at least, that's how Doug tells it. However, young Walker would not give up, as he tested the cloning device on himself, cloning him. His clone would boldly flee from the lab, and grow up to become a hobo, now going under the name "Chester A. Bum".
Doug Meets the Internet[edit]
“I'm not a slave to a god that doesn't exist!”
After Doug totally bombed at his science career, he couldn't find a job. He became an illustrator to support himself. One day, Doug's employer got very mad and squirted paint into his eyes; Doug then needed glasses. When he left the optometrist after stealing the glasses, he was met by a pompous rich guy. The man took Doug in and gave him a luxurious life. He was impressed with Doug's loud, fast-paced sense of humor and gave him his own website, thatguywiththeglasses.com. Doug would go on to start his YouTube career in 2007, creating a persona called the Nostalgia Critic, a bespectacled reviewer who verbally destroyed Z-grade '80s–'90s movies of a slightly obscure nature. The specky guy criticized many movies that don't make any sense at all, most notably 3 Super Power Mortal Teenage Jingle Burger Surf Ninjas Fern-Pokemon Ka-Space Son Duck Dragon Fighter-zilla, Jerry & Robin-verfield: Annihilation in King Arthur's Duck Tits Court.
Doug first rose to prominence under his pen name "The Mind Fuck", in which he talked about the religion of Nostalgia. Nostalgia, as he would make clear, was a dangerous and corrupt religious movement started by bratty '90s and '80s children who were defensive of their gods—the cartoons of those decades. Their gods, according to Doug, were dead, but those kids refused to acknowledge this! As expectable, Doug was screamed at by the adherents of the religion all over the Internet, with many priests declaring Critic a blasphemer who needed to be stoned by His Masculinity Lord Heh-Maahn, also known as "He-Man" when translated from the Nostalgaic language Toihcomerschahl. Nostalgiaists were also offended by Critic's criticism of the environmental god of nature, Captain Uerth. Both of these gods were worshipped from action cartoons from the past decades, and were widely regarded as possessing biologically advanced memetics.
The last straw, however, came with realizing good potential in one of the gods over another. When talking about Sonic the Hedgehog, Doug chose to praise the Sonic-like god Sah'Tam, a god widely considered to Nostalgiaic equivalent of Satan, over the god A'Osth. This resulted in an outrage against what many considered a messiah of childhood comedy. Doug Walker eventually admitted that A'Osth was hilarious, but would have been a truly evil god of tyranny. Sonic the Hedgehog himself would later comment on this: "I've dealt with imposters before, and those are NO GOOD, so I thank Critic for stifling lies about my fast-going nature." This review, however, brought the Critic to the attention of Roger Ebert, Harry Knowles, Lowtax, and Seanbaby. They were amazed by his talented and thorough criticisms of Nostalgiaic religious beliefs. His show was a success, and the Critic won the "Best Critic of the Year" award at YouTube Live, even beating the Irate Gamer.
In 2010, the Critic reviewed The Room. Tommy Wiseau then claimed copyright infringement — the first to do so since the Critic's YouTube days, in an event that would be known as "Roomgate". As a result, the Critic mocked him and John-From-Theroommovie.com, not knowing they were the same person. As a result, Livejournal's resident movie reviewers by day, Pretty Cures on different teams by night, refuse to review The Room lest Wiseau catches wind.
Attacks on the Nostalgia religion[edit]
The Nostalgia Critic, as his name indicates, criticizes the religion of Nostalgia (also known as Nostalgiaism, Nostalgiaicism, Nastyalgia, or Nasty Gea), but what is worth noting is all those various denominations, aspects, and silly terms of Nostalgia for the religion Doug focuses most on. Nostalgia is, simply put, the religion dedicated to worshipping '80s–'90s cartoon characters as pagan gods, but the gods aren't so much important as the denominations.
- Nostalgia – The most calm and least radical, Nostalgia encompasses the basic beliefs of the kids of the past generations. They believe that newer cartoons and films are evil and must be destroyed in a fire. However, they can tolerate fans of the younger cartoons. These people are referred to as "Nostalgiac People" or "Nostalgians".
- Nostalgiaism – A little more on the tubular side, Nostalgiaists believe that the younger generations themselves are sinful, and must be forcibly converted, or else be killed. Nostalgiaists have often been compared to the KKK, Nazi Germany, and Al-Qaeda for their violent behavior. Not only are they condemning of all newer kids, but they also believe in forcing others to worship their gods, something that not even moderate Nostalgians do. This was evidenced in Doug's review of Disney's James & The Giant Peach, in which fans tried to shoot Doug for daring to criticize the film.
- Nostalgiacism – The horrible breeding of fascist communism and Nostalgiasim, and also known as State Nostalgiaism, these people seek to not only persecute fans of newer cartoons, but also to establish a one-culture National Socialist state with authoritarian ideals. Not only are newer cartoons banned, but even other religions not related to cartoons at all, such as Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Juddhism, Budaism, Scientology, Science, Cyance, Cyantologism, Scientonomy, Etceteraism, Peterceteraism, etc., are banned! Despite this state enforced Nostalgia. Most Nostalgiacized nations aren't actually true totalitarian dictatorships, but rather, extremely nationalistic mob democracies. One notable example is the People's Nostalgaic Democratic Federal Monarchic Republic of Hyrule, which is ruled by the extremely hy-rule-ing presidential monarch. This federation was not attacked by Doug, but his rival, the Angry Video Game Dork.
Rivalry with the AVGN[edit]
Over time, the Nostalgia Critic's series gained popularity and became a hit, inspiring several other film goers to become critics. But success comes with haters. Many fans of both Nostalgia Critic and Cinemassacre's James Rolfe (an old friend of Doug's, mentioned above), better known as the Angry Video Game Nerd, started comparing the two, noting how Doug's profanity- and gag-laced criticism of Nostalgiaism was similar to James's profanity- and gag-laden criticism of low-budget retro video games. People from the AVGN's Nerd Army flamed and spammed up Doug's website, flooding the comments section of his Nicktoons reviews by telling Doug that he's Doug Funnie, in hopes that he would go insane.
Doug responded by telling the Nerd to keep his fans under control. In response to this, James, still upset over Doug mutating him into a monster years ago, began to trash talk the Critic with one line: "I'm the fucking nerd." But the Nerd also said how on the forums he considered himself a fan of the Critic. The Critic responded by screaming at the Nerd and saying how there had to be a hidden message. He uncovered it in a cheap knockoff of The Da Vinci Code; the message was "LICK MY SHIT NOSTALGIA CRITIC." The Nerd again responded; he said that the message was close but the real message was, "LICK MY FUCKING BALLS, YOU PIECE OF SHIT NOSTALGIA CRITIC." This prompted Doug Walker, James Rolfe, and their fans to start World War III.
During an Angry Nerd autograph signing at a video game convention within a video game store, the Critic barged in. The Nerd was with some a-hole named "Captain S". Yeah, I don't know who he is either. They all had a slow-motion fight and after a few minutes, they stopped. The Nerd challenged the Critic to review a shitty game, and The Critic challenged the Nerd to review a shitty movie. They did and it ended up in tears. THAT'S WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU FIGHT! They FINALLY had a fight to the death, in which AVGN kicked his ass 'till buffalo diarrhea came out of his ears, and the AVGN busted out the Super Mecha Death Christ 2000 B.C. Version 4.0 Beta and blasted the high holy hell out of the Critic. He remained alive and decided to be a bum again, stating that fight really sucked in a Bum Review. Eventually, the two's rivalry became more friendly, their fandoms had a truce, and they even made crossover reviews together.
TGWTG expansion and Kickassia[edit]
Nostalgia Critic's website, known then as That Guy with the Glasses (later Channel Awesome), started to include more reviewers over time, such as The Cinema Snob, Todd in the Shadows, and Doug's own female counterpart, the Nostalgia Chick Lindsay Ellis. If it wasn't for the independent YouTube reviewers like PhantomStrider, I Hate Everything, and Bobsheaux, Doug would have an illegal monopoly on the Internet Cartoon Critic market, which is the exact thing that Doug's criticism of religions like Nostalgiaicism would indicate he opposes. It became especially jarring when capitalism started to hurt the ICC market hard through the copyright ID system run by Viacom.
Doug started a series on his site in 2008 called "Ask That Guy", where he would answer questions for idiots. Years later, Doug got bored with "That Guy" and murdered the rich man who funded him. He then became very moody and started hating everything, even to the extent of wearing dark clothes and hat, and a red tie... hamster jelly.... After escaping from Doug's laboratory, Chester A. Bum became a hobo and was met by a dude with a camera. He took up the dude's offer to star in the Indecline series Bumfights. Chester was treated poorly, and got only a $20 Starbucks gift card as compensation. He then sacked the guy, took his camera, and started recording himself on what he thinks about the current movies in theaters, as part of a series that he would call Bum Reviews. Chester returned to Doug and took up an offer to host Bum Reviews on thatguywiththeglasses.com, for a heightened salary of $20.42.
Operation: Kickassia was a 2010 campaign by the Nostalgia Critic to lead his fellow men and women at TGWTG (also known as the Cobra Axis), such as Nostalgia Chick, Todd in the Shadows, Phelous, The Cinema Snob Brad Jones, and the rest, to liberate a territory in Nevada from the Communist regime known as The People's Democratic Republic of a Random Yard in a Nevada Desert, better known as Molossia. Nostalgia Critic effectively invaded the country and helped the non-existent citizens start a revolution against Kevin Baugh, the president of the Molossia People's Republic, making himself the dictator. However, just like with what happened when the Socialists took over Mother Russia, Doug became a toiletalitarian warlord, and the former rebels decided to help Kevin get his Republican society back. After being reinstated, Kevin made the Channel Awesome members honorary citizens, despite being overthrown at first by Doug.
After this, two other operations, Suburban Knights and To Boldly Flee, happened. The latter was a reality-altering event that changed all time as we know it today—Phelous and his girlfriend, Obscura Lupa, left Channel Awesome and started their own site, phelous.com. Really? They named their site after Phelous? What a narcissistic misogynist! Doug Walker, the guy with the glasses, totally never did that before it was renamed to Channel Awesome!
#ChangeTheChannel and The Wall review[edit]
In the end, the Nostalgia Critic turned into the Devil among viewers due to the #ChangeTheChannel drama, where it was alleged that Doug had mistreated staff at Channel Awesome. Doug then killed whatever was left of his career when he posted his infamous review of Pink Floyd's The Wall, making AVGN king of the wholesome Internet universe.